“Here. Or rather, up there.” She pointed along the road to a brightly-colored signboard marked with human letters that surely were handprinted.

“I do not read N’Glish,” he reminded her. “What does it say?”

“It says Dog Days Fair, August first through third, nine to nine, two miles,” she answered. “Which means lots of food and a place to walk around. It’s a party,” she added, catching sight of his puzzled frown. “A big outdoor party where everyone’s invited. Pricey as hell, probably, but I don’t really care at this point.”

“Here?” Tagen saw, for the first time, all the other groundcars on the road. They were filled with humans, many with children, and most were traveling in the same direction as they themselves. The oncoming traffic, by comparison, was sparse.

Dread, like sleeping coals, came to burning life inside him. Many humans, gathered in an isolated area. Loud sound, thick smells, confusion.

His expression and his silence had not escaped Daria’s notice, as so few things did. Now she was frowning, ready to be concerned at his command.

“Take us there,” he said.

“What are you thinking?” she asked and almost immediately afterwards, her eyes flashed wide. “You think he’s there?”

“I think it may attract him,” he told her, stressing the variable.

She stared up the road, her face tightening with thought. He could see her becoming aware of the same qualities of seclusion and prey as he had done. “He couldn’t,” she said at last. “It’s too hot.”

“He has his females with him.”

“In broad daylight?” Daria shook her head, but it was not necessarily a gesture of negation. “Okay then,” she said at last. “If he’s there, he’ll probably stay close to the main gate, so he can leave in a hurry if he has to without attracting too much attention.”

“I think it likely. I think also he may keep close to the surrounding woods rather than move out among the crowds. With so many humans close at hand, he is likely to feel very Jotan.” His hands were already curling selfconsciously. He could see the place where the trees terminated, and a great field filled with groundcars. And humans. Hundreds, it seemed. Thousands. “Very Jotan,” he said again.

“Hopefully, we’ll be in and out.” Daria navigated off the main road and into the field, moving slow between rows of parked vehicles until she came to the barrier of the forest. She drove right on into the bushes in order to win the cover of trees, but it did gain them shade. She set about opening windows, and then shut off the engine. “We’ll ask at the gate. If anyone noticed him, it’d be there. We can walk around a little more, if you want, but I’m afraid to take all day. The heat-“

“We shall not leave Grendel long,” Tagen said firmly, unbuckling himself. He did not need her to tell him about the dangers of heat. Or Heat. “If our questions at the gate are not answered and we see nothing at the eating place, we will leave. Heat will come to me as surely as to E’Var and I doubt that he would suffer it for long. We will be quick, but we must be sure.”

Daria followed him from the vehicle, exiting through his door as hers was blocked by branches. “You really think he’s here, don’t you?”

Tagen stared out over the tops of groundcars to the place where humans were admitted in streams to the closed grounds of ‘fair’. He could hear a constant undulating roar—a medley of happy screams and frustration, summer tempers fraying and excitement running unbounded—all of it underscored by cacophonous music and mechanical noise. There was only one way to make such a setting better primed for murder and that would be to hold ‘fair’ at night.

“My instincts tell me if he travels the same road as we, and if he means to hunt, this is a good place for it. More than that, it is pointless to speculate.” Saying this, he took his neural stunner and his plasma gun from his gunbelt and tucked them out of sight inside his jacket.

Daria’s eyes were a weight he could feel as she stared at the slight bulging of his concealed weapons. “So this is it,” she said.

He shut the car’s door, and then reached in through the open window to rub at Grendel’s head. “Perhaps.”

Her hand came to rest lightly on his back and he turned to her, bending swiftly to take her lips in a kiss. She returned the touch with urgency and finished with a stirring bite to his jaw passionate enough to remind him of Heat coming, and precious minutes only before it became evident. And ah, how much he wished he could forget E’Var and just take this female into his arms. To love her, while loving was still possible, before this day’s events and all of Earth was behind him for all time.

“I love you,” she whispered.

He wished that he could say the same and know it to be true. For all the ache and intensity of his emotion, his world did not come with its own understanding of love for a mate as hers did. Fathers loved sons, as presumably females loved daughters. Mates were for mating, too transitory a thing for the depths of endurance the expression evoked. And what was this if not transitory? He knew it. He knew it when first she brought him to her bed. Love was for keeping, not leaving behind.

And none of that mattered. Feeling her breath at the hollow of his throat, her arms around his body, her hair underneath his hands, Tagen came to the unhappy understanding that officers may think in terms of rules as absolutes, but emotions did not.

“I love you.” He said it. He meant it. Gods help him. He said it again, feeling it hurt even more with repetition.

She uttered a laugh, a thin disguise over a sob, and hugged him tight before stepping away. “Okay,” she said. She squared her shoulders, a rock in the river of humanity she so feared. “Let’s go get this guy.”

“My brave Lindaria,” he said, crookedly smiling. “Indeed. Let’s.”

*

The hunting was good, every bit as good as Sue-Eye had claimed. The woods were a welcome dumping ground for bodies and its shade, if not quite enough to keep Heat’s teeth out of him, was better than the blistering weight of full sun. The outskirts of the endless celebrations was a haven for Kane’s kind—dark men avoiding notice as they pursued their own unwholesome trades. There was drinking of toxic fermentations, smoking of white paper and of glass pipes. And there was flesh to be had, flesh for sale and flesh for fun. It was a smuggler’s haven, like any lining the docks of smuggler’s space, and every eye that passed Kane’s way passed on, recognizing him as a brother.

Kane entered the woods with Raven and Sue-Eye at his side. He was searching for a shaded place to be his killing ground, one that was out of sight from the main path, where the sounds of bone snapping might be mistaken for dry branches underfoot. Screams, he could do nothing about but try to remember to tracheate his targets.

His chosen den was occupied at first by a couple of humans mating in a drunken frenzy, but not for long. Two humans brains flushed with lust filled an entire vial with dopamine and Kane’s mood lightened. He tossed the bodies into the bushes out of sight and snapped his fingers.

Both his humans came to attention, but it was Sue-Eye he fixed on. “I want to do this as quickly as possible,” he told her.

She nodded, and beside her, Raven folded her arms and frowned.

“I get more product from a sex-fired brain,” he said.

Sue-Eye nodded again.

“You’re going to bring me males and you’re going to get them ready to fuck.”

She pulled her shirt up and tied it between her breasts, showing her bare midriff and the painted sun around her belly-dimple to the world.

“You bring them right here.” Kane indicated a fairly open place right beside the clearing they now occupied, somewhat screened by thick bushes, but not so thickly that he couldn’t cross over in a hurry if he wanted to. “And you make them ready for me, ichuta’a. Go.”